


The Mistakes Fate Made

by Coyotebee



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Crossover, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-13
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-19 07:44:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 18,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/881241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coyotebee/pseuds/Coyotebee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Winter 2009: Harry and Louis go to the same Script concert. They never meet.<br/>Summer 2009: Louis auditions for X-Factor. He doesn’t make the cut.<br/>2010: He auditions again, passes, and meets Harry.</p><p>These events were designed by fate, making sure Harry and Louis were brought together at the exact right time. Fate, however, slips up because Louis dies. Now it's trying to fix itself and a young girl who knows about it reveals all this to Harry. Fate might bring Louis back to him.</p><p>Based on the Withern Rise Trilogy by Michael Lawrence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**May 2024**

“Myxo is the new group that’s cropped up in the past several months. You go on hiatus for two years, and another boy band is on your tail. That’s how it goes, doesn’t it? Anyway, what do you think of them?”

The interviewer takes the iPhone away from her mouth and holds it closer to Harry.

“They’re great, very talented. They can dance,” Harry says into the phone. “We’ve been a band for fourteen years and we still can’t dance.”

“To be fair, you’re all in your thirties now. You’re far too old to dance!”

“Yeah, we’ve all got osteoporosis. It’s dangerous to dance. We could break a hip.”

“That’s why your tour schedule is less intense for this album, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, just… just old age,” Harry says with a smirk, a smirk that contradicts what he’s said. Every time he smiles, he looks sixteen again. His cheeks never thinned out completely.

Harry and the interviewer are in the arena’s cafeteria. Niall’s toward the end of the room, waiting for his order to come over the counter. His twin girls revolve around him, chasing each other, pawing at his thighs as they do so. He hears what Harry says and steps out of the circle, breaking up their game.

“Him and Louis are already an old married couple in wheelchairs!” he whispers loudly to the interviewer from ten feet away. She turns around to shoot him a smile, then goes back to Harry.

“That true?”

“Yup,” Harry says, and sets his hands neatly on the table between them. In truth, nine years of marriage probably did not qualify them as an old married couple, but they were making steady progress on that.

“Are you surprised you’ve lasted this long?”

“Me and Louis? Or the band?”

“The band.”

“Not really. We’ve been such great mates right off the bat, and I think we’ve learned how to give each other space. That’s the main—“

“Harry?” Cal says from the doorway of the cafeteria. “Harry come with me.”

“I’m in the middle of an interview.”

“No, you gotta end it,” Cal says, then looks toward Niall. “Niall, you need to come too.”

Harry clenches his fists. This is grave.

The interviewer’s eyes bounce back and forth between him and Cal.

“Um, thank you. Have a good day…” Harry says. He gets up and goes to Cal.

“What is it?” Harry asks.

Cal glances uncomfortably at the interviewer, so Harry takes it that he wants to keep this private. Niall joins them, one daughter scooped up in his arms. Cal picks up the other twin. He starts leading them down the hall. Fast. The twin Cal’s holding has a tuft of hair tied up on top of her head and it bobs up and down wildly. They’re jogging.

“The lighting rig on the stage fell down. Like, two minutes ago,” Cal says. “It fell on Louis.”

Harry’s question comes out automatically: “What? Is he okay?”

“We don’t know. The paramedics are coming.”

Harry tears past Cal and Niall.

He knows how to get to the stage from this hall. He’s performed at this arena four times, spent hours wandering around in boredom. He goes through a pair of blue doors that opens up to the floor seating. The stage is at the other end. There’s a small crowd up there – Liam and other people from their crew are holding up the light fixture, made up of crisscrossing lines of metal. They’re setting it down.

Louis is tiny on that stage, on the left. Harry only sees his back, how his shoulder blades fold underneath his t-shirt. Already, there’s an emergency team – _their_ emergency team – hovering around him.

Harry’s still running and has to slow down since the crew are in the aisle. He completely stops when he sees Zayn, who has turned to him. He has Evan in his arms – Harry and Louis’ son.

Zayn had been taking care of him while Harry did the interview and Louis was with their vocal coach backstage. Backstage, that’s where Louis was supposed to be.

Harry takes Evan, and presses his little head down on his shoulder, stupidly thinking that his baby would understand what he’s seeing if he looked toward the stage.

Harry wants to get closer, but Zayn clutches his waist and someone – Lou? – says, “Harry, you don’t wanna see this.”

Harry tugs himself away from Zayn.

“Don’t go, man.”

“I need to see him. Tell him he’ll be okay.”

“He’s unconscious.”

Harry pulls away again.

“Harry, they won’t let you get close to him.”

He cooperates. He stands there, probably thirty feet away from the stage and watches. In him, there’s been a low hum of nerves the whole time, but Harry has mostly felt nothing. Things are just happening. Time isn’t slow or fast – it goes on and it’s unnoticeable. The paramedics come in, there’s more hovering around Louis, pulling at his limbs, and they put him on a stretcher. As they do this, Harry can see more of Louis, not just his back. His shirt’s been cut off, and there’s blood all down his side, thick enough that a person couldn’t tell the shade of his skin.

Evan lifts his head off of Harry’s shoulder. Without thinking, Harry strokes his neck.

They start rolling the stretcher off the stage. People keep saying, “Oh my God,” including Zayn. There’s a bandage around Louis’ head, and they’ve put an oxygen mask on his face. The baby giggles.

Louis doesn’t make it to the hospital alive.


	2. Chapter 2

**July 2024**

Harry’s been coping with the loss in many ways. At times, when he’s on the recliner, rocking Evan, he’ll imagine the day of the accident rewinding itself:

Louis is taken off the stretcher, the scissors that cut his shirt open now stitches up cotton, and Liam and the other crew put the stage lighting back on him, and they disperse... However, the rig rises into the air, gravity working it upward. Louis stands himself up, intact.

Harry thinks up variations of that day too, how Louis’ death could have been avoided. Harry would ask the interviewer to talk with him on the floor of the venue. He’d catch the lights shaking and he’d yell at Louis to move away. Or that morning when the band was discussing who’d do the interview, they’d pick Louis. Or their vocal coach would put off his session with him, and Louis would take Evan out for a walk.

There were a lot of possibilities. In gathering them all, Harry for some strange reason, pictures a thick line being painted on a canvas, the brush going up. Splinters are drawn one by one, all shooting off from the top of the line, representing every alternative he’s come up with.

He’s not sure why imagining weird, impossible scenarios makes him feel slightly better. But Liam tells him there’s no normal way to grieve, and that was why Harry’s other way of coping is talk out loud to Louis like he was there.

One morning, he walks by the outdoor pool to check if it needs cleaning. Evan is tucked in his baby basket in the shade.

“Remember our pool party in the summer? That was a lot of fun. At the next one, I’d want to have barbecue going,” Harry says. He doesn’t murmur; he unabashedly speaks at full volume (no one’s at the house anyway).

He’s learned to do this from Louis himself. The week after Louis’s grandmother died, Harry overheard him in the kitchen when he thought Harry was out for run.

He said, “Nan, I swear to God, I’m gonna outdo Harry’s cooking skills for once by using your recipe. What did you use again? Nutmeg?”

Harry came in, and asked him why he was doing that. “It just helps. I’m not mental...” he said. Louis had hid his embarrassment then because after that, he wrote letters to his grandmother instead.

Harry does a full circle around the pool, occasionally making remarking. As always, casual talk dissolves into an improvised elegy. Harry’s face twists while he weeps, then says softly into the air, “Louis. I love you. We won’t be kept apart. At some point, I’ll be with you, and our life together will start again. Louis... you’ll always be in my heart too.”

***

Harry isn’t able to sleep. It’s the sixth night in a row, and also his sixth night without any company over besides his son. Zayn’s stayed with him for a few weeks and Liam too. Harry’s literally had them sleep on the bed with him since waking up has turned into an ordeal, a hard descent into reality as he remembers Louis is gone. Having someone there made sure he wouldn’t have the privacy to get self-indulgent and break down every time.

By this night, he’s figured out a way to distract his mind. He goes to the next room, the nursery, and sits on a chair by Evan’s crib to peer at him through the bars. Harry’s bare knees, pressed against crib, are milky from the pure light coming through the open door.

For as long as Evan’s had two parents, he’s had only one for the same amount of time. Three months with Louis, three months without him. From here on out, the balance will be tipped severely. Evan will spend years and decades without his other father.

A shadow comes up beside Harry.

He immediately snaps his head toward it, and sees that it’s not a shadow, it’s a silhouette, a figure of person. And it’s flickering in and out. Beside him. Three flickers, and it becomes solid.

Harry bolts up and throws his arms over the width of the crib to protect Evan. In doing so, his shoulder bumps into the silhouette, and it’s warm, has weight, it has colour, it’s real.

It’s the doubled-over body of a teenage girl. She gasps, in some kind of pain, and brings herself upright.

They look at each other, wide-eyed. The girl springs back. Her eyes dart over the rest of the room, the dim blue hues and darkened corners, and over to Evan. Harry instinctively puts himself between her and his son and faces her directly.

“I’m sorry,” she says waving her arms in front of her. “I’m not a burglar or anything. Forget this happened.”

Harry barely takes in the meaning of the words. He’s too occupied with how this girl evidently _materialized_ beside him. He stares, just stares in order to register her realness. Doesn’t matter that she claims she’s not a threat – the way she got in was petrifying enough.

“How did you _do_ that?”

She’s there, for sure. Wearing a band t-shirt with the strap of a satchel cutting across her torso.

“I’ll head out. Lead the way, if you want,” she says, and her hands fiddle with the clasp of her bag.

“No, no! How did you get in here? It looks like you – you zapped in.”

“Never mind that. Sorry, I’ll leave now,” she says. She turns around, walks out of the nursery.

Harry follows her, catches her by the shoulder. “Wait! How did you get it in here?!”

“I can’t tell you.”

She proceeds down the hall . Whatever method she used to come in, she wasn’t using it to get out, and it’s clear she hasn’t been in the rest of the house. She goes into a hall that only leads to more shut doors, and turns back out of it when she realizes this.

She rushes further down the hall, her waist-length brown hair fluttering behind her. Harry watches her, fascination and shock gluing him to the spot.

She’s doubling back suddenly. She does it to peer at photograph on the wall for a few seconds. It’s of Harry and the rest of the band from 2011, all tired and sweaty, but smiling maniacally in it.

After, she glances in Harry’s direction and continues to run. At the end of the hall, the door to the sitting room is wide open, and the balcony can be seen beyond it. Strangely, the girl bypasses the staircase that would eventually lead her out of the house, and goes straight into that room.

Captivated and confused, needing to keep her in sight to know what’s going on, Harry goes after her. He gets to the sitting room’s threshold when she’s made it onto the balcony. She has her hand over her chest, maybe holding something.

“What are you doing here?” Harry asks. “Where did you come from?”

The girl’s image flickers. She goes out completely within seconds. The whole time, she stares at Harry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good Lord, I hope I get this to work. We're veering right out of stone cold realism from here.


	3. Chapter 3

“Do you take sleeping pills? Those fuckers can be hallucinogens,” Niall says in a groggy voice over the phone.

“No, never! This was totally real,” Harry says. During Niall’s contemplative pause, he paces the balcony. Two potted plants are there, and he notices a chunk of a leaf has been torn off. 

“I can’t... You’re sure she didn’t sneak in the usual way? You know, through a door or window? No laws of nature being broken?”

“Yes. I saw her. I saw her, like... teleport.”

“Wow... _wow_ , all right. I... I guess all I can do is believe you. You know, this is like that time –”

“I know. Ragg Studios.”

“Yeah...”

They were referring to their recording sessions at Ragg Studios in the north of England, sometime in 2015, only months before he and Louis married. Louis was in the lounge, just him, texting on his phone. Harry danced into the room, wiggling his arms like seaweed underwater, and he started singing the vocal he had finished recording, but an operatic rendition of it. 

Louis put down his phone and shook his head at him. “More feeling, Harry. More soul! Sing it like you’ve —”

From a corner of the room, a child who definitely wasn’t there before, launched herself across the floor. She threw herself into Louis, and he was knocked back into the couch. Her arms wrapped around his mid-section and she set her head on his chest. Not a second later, she was gone.

“What the fuck? What the _fuck_?!” Louis says, scrambling off the couch. “Did you see that?!”

Harry and Louis did a lot of yelling. Hearing them, the other boys rushed over, and when they told them what happened, they unnanimously agreed that Ragg Studios was haunted and they weren’t recording there ever again.

“This girl didn’t seem like a ghost though,” Harry says to Niall. “She was so... I don’t know... aware of herself? Like she recognized she wasn’t supposed to be in here, and had somewhere to go back to.”

“Well, what would I know other than it’s crazy shit, mate...”

Harry goes over the story again, mostly to let out his amazement. Once Niall hangs up, Harry spends two hours on his laptop, looking for people with similar experiences, yet there’s nothing quite like his own. Nobody mentions full-bodied apparitions blinking into life and interacting with them.

The day passes and Harry fills it with banalities. He goes to the market, wipes down the oven, makes purées for Evan... Harry’s always been good with taking of a home, and he’s gotten hyper-efficient at it since Louis’ funeral. Caring for Evan and chores kept him busy and they needed to be done — there was nothing else in his life that needed to be done. He was a singer in a band that wasn’t recording or on tour. He had to have a way to occupy himself every day. Or he’d just be cuddling Evan and yearning for Louis to walk through the bedroom door and say, “Haz! Evan! I’m back! Let me show you this wicked Superman t-shirt I found in the kid’s section at Old Navy!”

No matter what he did, no matter how much focus he put into a task, Harry’s thoughts pull to Louis, and the space he left. However, today is different. All the mundane things he does (washing up Evan’s bowls, folding pillowcases) is interspersed with thoughts about the girl who came last night. He can’t explain any of it.

The next morning, his phone rings from his nightstand, waking him up.

Through the speaker, his gardener Ben says, “Harry? Something’s going on.”

“What?”

“There was a girl waiting at the end of your driveway here. I tried to talk to her. Claimed she was a neighbour of yours. She looked really uncomfortable. Very strange.”

“Where’d she go?”

“I can see her right now – walking down the street really fast. Should I hit the panic button out here?”

“What does she look like? Does she have brown hair?”

“Yes.”

“She a teenager? Like, maybe sixteen?”

“At the most. You know her?”

“Sort of. Hang up, mate, I’ve got this. I need to make a call.”

One of the benefits of living in a gated community was the private security, who Harry calls up quick and tell to hold the girl once she’s at the community’s main gates. Harry checks up on Evan (still sleeping) and has Ben come in to watch over him.

Harry rushes out onto the street and down a few houses to where the gates are. Harry feels a pang of guilt when she sees the girl in handcuffs, sitting on a bench and the security guard watching over her. He’s holding her bag too.

“Sorry about those handcuffs, but you need to explain yourself,” Harry says.

The girl looks at him blankly. “It’s better that I don’t. Just let me go, and I’ll never come back again.”

“No, no – last time you were here, I saw you come into my house, and I saw how you went back out. I want you to explain how you did that.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll tell other people. You’ll tell Louis.”

In sympathy, the security guard grimaces and shakes his head at Harry. Harry’s okay with it. While the news of Louis’ death was heavily covered in the media, he wasn’t expecting it to have trickled down into every nook of the human population.

Harry takes his first real look of the girl, now in the bright morning light. Knobby nose, long high-arching brows over hooded eyes, sunkissed skin — and Harry glowers. Louis’ features.

Or the Tomlinson's features, to be objective about it. She looks more like Louis’ twin sisters, they’d even be around the same age, the main difference being her hair is dark and unruly. She had to be related to them somehow...

“Who are you?” Harry asks.

The girl’s impassive.

“Explain everything, and I promise I won’t tell anyone. If you tell me, then I’ll have this guard let you go, and we won’t call the police.”

“Fine,” the girl says. “Fine, I guess.”

“You sure about this?” the guard asks.

“Yeah.”

The guard takes the handcuffs off her and allows her to stand and take her bag.

“I’m not talking in front of him,” the girl says, gesturing to the guard. “Or anyone except you.”

“Okay, well, tell me while I walk back home. I need to get back to my son.”

The girl jolts. “Your son?”

“Yeah, didn’t you see me with him the first night you came?” Harry says and they start walking down the street.

“Isn’t – isn’t he Louis’ baby?”

“Yes. We’re his parents.”

“Oh,” the girl says in a tone that’s slightly distasteful. “I thought you were a live-in nanny or something.”

Harry wasn’t going to give her a smiley lecture on how outdated her views on same-sex parenting was, it wasn’t the time.

“All right... first of all, what’s your name?” he asks.

“Ruth.”

“Last name?”

“Underwood.”

Harry tries to connect the name to anyone related to Louis and comes up with nothing. Admittedly, he doesn’t know the Tomlinson family tree that well. He’d look it up later to be certain.

“So Ruth, how’d you get into my house?”

She takes off running at full speed.

Her bag jiggles by her hips. She’s heading for a cluster of tall hedges.

Harry goes after her and gets to her once she’s in the hedges. She’s got her hand over her chest like before. She has a necklace on, and her fingers are in the pouch dangling from the chain. She takes out something solid – a rock? – and she starts to flicker out of sight.

Harry grabs at her.

“Get _off!_ ” she says. She pulls away. “Get off!”

“Don’t leave!”

“Let go of me!”

“Not until — ah!”

Harry ends up letting go because a massive ache courses through him and he doubles over.


	4. Chapter 4

While on his knees, even through the pain, he notices that the ground changes from grass to carpet, back to grass, then to carpet. He groans. The ache is thorough. In every layer of his body. Ligaments, skin, marrow, everything.

Ruth’s beside him. She’s standing with her head bowed. Around them, the hedges snap out of sight, and are replaced by lavender walls for about one second, then they come back. Ruth slowly places her shaking hand back into the pouch, looking like every inch of movement is painful to her. For another couple seconds, their surroundings are a bizarre all-in-one mixture of a bedroom and greenery.

Ruth puts a hand on his shoulder. The pain goes away as fast as it came. The hedges stay solid.

“What was that?!” Harry says, getting up.

“What a stupid thing to do!” Ruth says. “Thank God we didn’t rip apart!”

“Seriously, what was that?”

“Leave it alone.”

“Oh come on... I just saw all that! What happened?”

“I’m not saying anything.”

“ _Please._ I’m freaking out over here!”

Apparently, Harry says it desperately enough that Ruth looks him over and deliberates.

“If I tell you, can you help me with something?”

“Help you with what?”

“Nothing big. I just... um... I need to look around your house.”

Harry frowns. “Why?”

“Just agree to it. We’ll talk about that later.”

“Okay... Okay, I’ll let you do that, I guess,” he says, thinking that it might be bizarre, but it’s not a major hassle for him.

“Here it goes then... All that you saw – the bedroom – well, that was my bedroom. Can you accept that? My room. That’s where you were transported when you grabbed me.”

“Yeah... Yeah, I mean, I _saw_ it and everything.”

“Good, because it gets crazier,” Ruth says. “My room, it’s not... Oh my God, this feels stupid when I put it into words...”

“Get on with it.”

“We were in my room in a different reality.”

Harry stares.

“Alternate realities... They’re real. I come from one. And I can jump in and out of them.”

“No... _no._ ”

“You don’t believe me, okay.”

“Obviously not. I – I believe in ghosts, but not that.”

“Oh! Well, that’s great. Believing in ghosts and believing in alternate realities is the same thing. Sometimes realities overlap, you see. Then you get those apparitions. They’re just people going on with their lives in their own world, at the same time and place as you are.”

“God, this is insane. No way.”

Ruth shrugs and her expression sours exactly like Louis’. She even throws her head, so dismissive, to add to the likeness. “I told you the truth,” she states.

“How the hell can you jump through them?”

“I don’t know. I just can. It’s tricky though and dangerous. Look what just happened. The ride is usually smoother than that.”

Harry keeps staring at her, thoughts going in every direction, every degree that was possible.

“If alternate realities are real, then what’s your version of reality? What world do you come from?” he asks.

“It’s quite similar to this, as far as I can tell.”

“Like – like there’s computers, there’s another London, and there’s this street?”

“Yes, though I’m not sure if this street is there. I’ve never been in this part of London in my home reality.”

He slaps his hands onto his face.

“Keep your promise. Don’t tell anyone. Not to that guard. No one at all. Not even Louis.”

Harry uncovers his eyes. “Louis?”

“Yes, Louis.”

“Oh. You think he’s alive.”

The corners of Ruth’s mouth drops. “He’s dead?”

Harry nods.

Ruth takes a breath and straightens her posture.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she says way too vacantly. “The first night I came, I saw the baby. I saw that picture on your wall of him... So I thought he was alive here.”

“Oh God –”

The nerves in Harry’s chest start to blaze.

“Is he –” he chokes out. “– is he still alive in your reality?”

Ruth groans. “I’m so _stupid!_ I shouldn’t have told you any of this... I’m sorry.”

She whips around and runs. There are more hedges beyond them and she slides between them. Harry follows her. Having a bigger frame than her, the hedges are much more of a barrier. He loses her.


	5. Chapter 5

Louis could be alive. There must be a reality where there was no accident. It doesn’t matter to Harry if it’s another Louis and another Harry together in a separate reality; all he wants is a glimpse, one more time to see Louis in front of him. He holds himself back though, from getting excited over it until he’s sure it could happen.

He thinks about Ruth too. She has to be related to Louis. On top of that, there must be a version of herself in Harry’s reality, and if not, a trace of any Underwood.

Harry calls Louis’ mother, but she says there are no Underwoods in their family on her side or Louis’ father’s side. With the whole alternate reality thing, it’s a possibility that the Underwoods go by a different last name, so he describes Ruth to her. His mother-in-law can’t think of anyone. Harry supposes it doesn’t rule out that Ruth isn’t related to the Tomlinsons in her world.

Which makes him very sure she could be another sister of his.

It wasn’t just the likeness to Louis making him assume this, it was her age. She looked like she was in high school. Louis’ twin sisters were 19 now, Ruth wouldn’t be lagging far behind. And the reaction she had to the news of Louis’ death – she was holding something in.

***

A couple nights pass. Harry’s sleep is solid on the first, then intermittent on the second. On that second night though, he fell asleep long and hard enough to have missed a major event:

That morning, when he goes to comfort a crying Evan, he sees a new stuffed animal on the shelf above the crib. It’s a green tyrannosaurus rex. On the tag, in faded ink, the name “Ruth” is written.

This more or less solidifies Harry’s belief that Ruth is Louis’ sister. She’s weirdly sentimental with Evan, and that could be explained by Evan being a nephew, and she wouldn’t know it, but Evan was biologically Louis’ son. Ruth and Evan shared blood.

Harry really wants to see her again, and he suspects she’d be back. Questions are rampaging through his brain as he rocks Evan to sleep and when Liam and Zayn come over for a visit. He can’t stick with their conversations.

He doesn’t tell any of them what happened, not Niall either. Not his family. A grieving widower saying his dead husband was alive in another dimension would make him worthy of intensive psychotherapy.

The night after the toy showed up, Harry stays awake from two o’clock onward, basing it off the time Ruth first came in. He sets himself up in Evan’s nursery too. He occupies himself with his iPad.

Unbelievably, she appears that very night.

She curses when she sees him, and fumbles with her necklace.

“No!” Harry says.

She hesitates and eventually drops the pouch.

“Go ahead with all your questions then,” she huffs.

“Why did you give Evan the stuffed animal?”

“He’s cute.”

“Come on, there’s more to it than that.”

“There is.”

“Is it because you’re related to Louis in your reality?”

“Yes,” she says.

“How are you related?”

“He’s a cousin.”

“So Louis is alive where you’re from?”

“No. He died.”

Considering the intensity of the grief that comes as he hears that answer, Harry didn’t realize how much he was riding on that possibility. A few seconds pass before he can speak through his emotions.

“What about other realities? There’s more than yours and this one, right?”

“You’re going to go mad. It’s not easy knowing what I know. Ignorance – what’s that saying? – ignorance is bliss.”

“Ruth, just answer me. I want to know if he’s alive anywhere else.”

“Why should I tell you anything more?”

Again, she brings out Louis’ look of dismissal, only hers isn’t playful.

“Because he’s my _husband_. I love him.”

Ruth peers at her feet. Such a teenager.

“Come on...”

Ruth shrugs.

Harry gets direct. He put his hands on her shoulders and lets his face fully show how he feels – desperate and sorrowful.

“If the answer is yes, he’s alive somewhere else, then all I’ll want is a _glimpse_ of him. I miss him. He’s been with me for fourteen years, Ruth.”

Ruth looks up at him, pulls away, turns around, then turns back toward him again, keeping distant.

“Yes. He’s alive. Somewhere he is, but I haven’t found that reality yet,” she says. “I’ve been trying to find that reality. I wanna see him as much as you do because – um, well, I need to clear something up – I lied to you. My name isn’t Ruth Underwood, it’s Ruth Tomlinson and in my reality, I’m Louis’ daughter.”


	6. Chapter 6

“That’s why I came back that morning when you caught me,” Ruth says. “I was waiting for him to come outside so I could, I don’t know, see him and maybe talk to him for a while. Same thing you want – just to see him alive. Then when you told me he was dead, I came back anyway since, well, Evan’s sort of my brother. I have no siblings in my reality.”

Dumbfounded, Harry approaches her and cups her chin. He searches her face for Louis, all the details. Her face is cut the same way. Pretty much all her features are the same, just softer, like her smaller rounder chin and thinner nose.

Ruth peels his hand away.

“Wow, how old are you?” Harry asks.

“I’m fourteen.”

“Louis was a _kid_ when he had you.”

“He wasn’t a kid. He was grown up. He was eighteen when I was born.”

“Yeah, eighteen is still a kid,” Harry says. “Who’s your mum?”

“Naia Underwood. They never got married. They were dating since 2009 then split when I was two years old, in 2011.”

With his fingers, Harry tugged at his lips to keep them from frowning.

“Was he ever in a band?”

“No... I know what you’re getting at... After I gave Evan my toy, I managed to sneak out and do some research, so I know my father and you were in a band. But there’s no One Direction in my reality. My dad never auditioned for X-Factor in July 2010 because I was going to be born any day then. He never met you.”

Harry was close to feeling (unreasonably) betrayed by Louis when he heard the name Naia. It was prevented knowing that Harry wasn’t in his life at all. That’s not to say he’s comfortable with it. He doesn’t like that he’s shared him, that the universe didn’t align events in every reality to ensure he and Louis were together.

“When did he die?”

“Nine years ago. He was twenty-three.”

“Whoa, I thought it’d be more recent... How?”

“It’s about as bad as how he died in this reality. Do you really want to know?”

Harry’s curiosity is powerful. “Yes,” he says.

“He was shot. He was at the Marling shopping centre during that mass shooting.”

Harry bows his head and takes a breath. Ruth, sensing that he wasn’t taking this too well, awkwardly fiddles with the handle on her bag.

“I know that...” Harry begins. “I know he wasn’t the same Louis that I knew, but it’s like... still depressing to think about that. To know he went through that pain and that he was so young.”

Ruth rubs her hands together, but says nothing. Harry’s questions stopped coming now. That part of his brain shut down as he thought about Louis.

“I told you the essentials... So I’d like to leave now,” Ruth says.

“Then take me with you. We’ll find Louis together.”

Ruth shakes her head vigourously.

“Why not?”

“You say all you want is a glimpse of him... But I don’t know you well enough to trust that you can.”

“I’ll pay you,” Harry says. “6500 pounds.”

“You’re mental.”

“12,000 pounds.”

“I don’t know...”

“20,000 pounds. You’ll easily buy yourself a good car with that.”

Ruth rocks herself on the balls of her feet. She cringes, a look that very much means, “I hate myself right now”, and says, “Fine... Okay.”

They go to Harry’s bedroom to discuss it. Ruth crafts the plans: two nights from now, she’d come back at three in the morning and they’d set off. They have to do it deep into the night – this reasoning is based on the fact that when entering a reality, the traveller always lands near someone from their immediate family (if they exist there). The least intrusive time to sneak in was while they were asleep.

They go through Harry’s closet, because for whatever reason, his clothes have to be all synthetic.

“Even my underwear?” he asks mostly to tease and test Ruth. She squirms and nods quickly.

She makes a list of things for him to bring. It’s like they’re going hiking – jacket, water bottle, snacks, etc. She mentions to bring his phone or iPad so he could search online for traces of Louis’ existence. She writes all this down for him. Her long hair covers the sides of her face as she looks down at the paper.

Harry thinks of Louis again, that is, the one who’s the father of this girl. He can’t picture him being eighteen, taking care of a newborn. At that age, Louis was at the X-Factor house, yelling “HUMAN SANDWICH! LOUIS SPECIAL!” and flopping onto a dozing Zayn, then telling Harry to lie on them too.

So five years after that, Louis died in the Marling shooting – where were they in his reality at that time? He remembers looking at the footage on a television that was in Ragg Studios –

“Ruth,” Harry says. She looks up immediately. “I saw a ghost one time... It was a little girl. In like, five seconds she ran across the room and hugged Louis. Was that you?”

“Yes. That was the moment I learned he died. I was four,” Ruth says. “That was the first time I ever broke into another reality. I had no idea what I did or where I was, but when I saw my dad I just ran over to him, thinking he was alive again... Then I was pulled back home.”

“So you’ve been looking for him since then?”

“No. I started looking about a month ago. I’ve been to eight realities since. Four of them didn’t even have Tomlinsons in them – actually, one didn’t even have humans – and in the other four, he was dead.”

“There are a lot of realities then.”

“Yeah. A lot.”

“So every time there’s a possibility for something else to happen, there’s a reality for it? With anything? Like, say I chose to eat toast instead of granola this morning, there’s a reality where I ate the granola?”

Ruth smiles – finally, some brightness in her. Her smile is one thing that very different from Louis – it’s toothy and little too wide.

“I’m not sure if it comes down to such little things like that... I’ve been to a lot of realities, just to explore them, but I really don’t know... Still, there’s probably millions. Or billions.” 

“That’s... overwhelming.”

“I know,” Ruth says without looking at him. “That’s why I said ignorance is bliss.”


	7. Chapter 7

Harry could have a brutal existential crisis right about now. There were probably hundreds or thousands of other Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinsons, so what did this mean? What happens to the idea of identity? Of destiny? They don’t hold up, do they?

He forces these questions out of his mind. His purpose is to see Louis. His last sight of him was when he was bloodied up and on a stretcher. He wants to replace it with an image of a living, smiling Louis. That’s all.

He’s thrilled about it. He’s incredibly chatty when his mum calls, and he goes shopping with Niall and tries on silly shirts, feeling like his old self. While he knows that whatever Louis he’ll find won’t be the exact Louis he knew, that’s okay with him. What he’s asking for, one look at him in the flesh, is easy to get and won’t betray the memory of the Louis he loves.

Evan makes Harry and Ruth’s prospective adventure tricky to coordinate. Harry obviously can’t leave his son alone for hours, but he can’t take him to Gemma’s overnight because wherever Evan is, Ruth will go. He figures it out eventually: Zayn.

Being single, childless, and a fifteen-minute drive away, Zayn tends to be Evan’s babysitter. Harry asks him to stay the night and to take care of his son. Since Harry can’t say, “I’ll be gone exploring alternate realities for a while, so if Evan gets fussy, get him his pacifier,” he has to make up a story about how he’s trying out a sleeping medication and it might knock him out hard enough that he’ll sleep through Evan’s cries.

So Zayn comes over, and Harry makes a show of his exhaustion so it seems reasonable when he says, “Zayn, if Evan cries during the night, don’t wake me up unless it’s major, okay? I really need my sleep. Haven’t slept in ages.”

Harry’s not a great liar, but if Zayn senses something off-centre, he doesn’t show it. Zayn falls asleep at one o’clock in the bedroom across from the nursery. He leaves the door open to hear Evan better.

Ruth comes at the time she promised, appearing beside Evan’s crib again. Feeling grateful and excited about their upcoming adventure, Harry hugs her. She doesn’t have much give. Once he lets go, she gets right down to business, asking him if he’s got everything packed. While they talk, he closes the door of the nursery so Zayn doesn’t hear anything.

“Here’s how reality jumping works,” Ruth begins, pulling on the pouch hanging at her chest. “This thing has a rock in it that’s from my home reality. I call it an anchor. The moment I take it out and expose it to this reality, it disappears and I disappear with it, going back home. Anything natural – a leaf or branch or whatever – sends itself back where it came from. Does that make sense? That’s why you can’t wear anything cotton-based... Whatever reality you’re going to will try to spit you out.”

Ruth jiggles the pouch a bit. “This is made of leather. For some reason, it keeps my anchor from sending me home while I’m in another reality... I’ve got more of these pouches in my bag with anchors from other realities... I can’t take them out, obviously. I’ll disappear to the world they belong to.”

“Right,” Harry says.

“Right. Now to get into a reality here’s what you do – grab onto me and think about Louis. That’s what it takes to get to a reality with him in it. I’ll be doing the same thing,” Ruth says. “Clearly, this isn’t a foolproof method or I already would’ve found a world he’s living in. The closest I’ve come to it is entering realities where he _used_ to be like this one. Jumping into specific realities is a crapshoot, really.”

“And will it hurt every time?” Harry said, thinking about the time he grabbed onto Ruth in the hedges.

“Yep. Every time.”

“So how many realities do you think we’ll have go to before we find Louis?”

“I don’t know. It might be the first one we land in or one thirty realities from now,” Ruth says.

“It make work right away though, if there’s two people who really want to see him,” Harry says.

Ruth nods. “That’s what I’m hoping for.”

Ruth asks him if he has any siblings. He tells her about Gemma, then she goes on to explain what to expect when entering a new reality:

Based on the “family rule” that Ruth mentioned the night before, they could potentially land beside Louis. That’s if they’re lucky. Realistically, they could just as easily wind up next to Ruth’s mother Naia. Or Evan. Or Harry’s mother, father or sister.

“So we have a one in six chance,” Harry states.

“Yeah, and that’s at best,” Ruth says. “Sometimes, you find siblings you don’t have in your own reality.”

Her eyes dart over to Evan’s crib.

“Right,” Harry says. “So... we don’t get transported to the other versions of us?”

“Nope, we never will,” Ruth says quickly. “I think... I think whatever crazy science controls all these realities somehow knows two versions of you shouldn’t be in the same space. So we don’t have to worry about that. What we _do_ need to worry about is the first few seconds that we’re in a reality. The ideal situation is that the person we appear beside is fast asleep. Then we can sneak out and research my dad’s whereabouts. If they’re awake and they see us, I’ll grab you and take us out of there straight away. Okay?”

“Okay,” Harry says. “But if it’s Louis who’s there, sleeping, what’s the plan?”

“We’ll still sneak out. We’ll talk about what we wanna do when it finally happens.”

“Good ‘cause it’s kinda creepy to loom over him. Really Edward Cullen.”

Ruth’s brow furrows, too young to get the reference. “Yeah, I mean, it’ll be a shock to see him,” she continues. “But we really can’t intrude on him like that.”

Ruth takes a hair tie from her bag and puts up her thick hair. Her cheekbones stand out when they’re uncovered like this, undeniably Louis’ daughter.

“Ready?” Ruth says.

Harry has the usual separation anxiety with Evan and it’s made worse that if something comes up, Zayn won’t be able to get him. But Evan was fine the last time Harry left him with someone else overnight. He knows Zayn and likes Zayn.

Harry nods. He goes over to the nursery’s door and opens it back up. He checks on Evan, who’s sweetly tranquil in his crib. Lastly, he slides on his jacket and his small leather bag that has his iPad and other things in it.

Ruth extends her hand to Harry. His chest gets heavy, both nervous and excited, feeling like Louis was getting close, like he was coming down the street. Harry grips Ruth’s wrist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Highly doubt anyone here has read The Withern Rise Trilogy/Aldous Lexicon, but if anyone has, here's me owning up to the fact that I've bent the rules of reality travelling to accommodate my fic. Canon, what's canon?


	8. Chapter 8

Ruth closes her eyes and Harry goes through his memories of Louis.

In his mind, he can clearly see the faded shirts he wore, how he rolled up the sleeves. He hears his twittering laugh. He feels Louis’s weight on his back from that time he gave him a piggy-back ride as they were running away from Paul. He recalls the morning of their wedding day when Niall insisted on a group picture. Harry felt puffs of breath on his ear as Louis whispered, “Let’s screw around with Niall. When the camera clicks, jump up and ruin the photo.”

He lets himself recall these moment with more sharpness than he ever has before, and they affect him as he expected they would: They make him yearn.

He’s already cringing when the pain bursts into him, then the soreness is all he’s thinking about, no more Louis. Harry keels over. Ruth’s fingers dig into his forearm.

The aching ceases, and as soon as it does, Ruth’s pulling him up.

There’s a shelf with stuffed animals on it. It smells like baby powder, and diapers are stacked in an open cupboard. There’s a crib.

Harry sighs. “Why didn’t that work? Did – mmph!”

Ruth clamps her hand over his mouth and frantically points to the crib. His baby is in there, however there’s one major difference – on the shelf of stuffed animals, one holds up a sign and instead of saying, “Evan” it says “Chloe.”

Harry leaps to the crib and shoots a look down into it. No light reaches the child in there; his eyes need to adjust to the darkness.

“Harry, we need to leave,” Ruth whispers in a panic.

The door that joins the nursery to Harry’s bedroom slams open. Harry looks over.

It’s him. The other him.

This Harry is shocked. Mouth agape, curls messed up, and wearing only boxers, he looks incredibly stupid.

“Follow me!” Ruth says.

Harry and Ruth bolt down the hallway.

“Who are you?!” the other Harry yells.

Ruth leads them into the sitting room and goes to the side of the room where they can’t be seen from the hall. She whips out the rock from its pouch.

Their setting instantly blurs out. Harry is doubling over from pain again. It’s shorter this time around.

They end up in Ruth’s bedroom. Harry flops onto her bed, catching his breath and waiting for the last few aches to leave him.

“Oh wow... That was strange,” Harry says.

Ruth clamps the sides of her face. “Harry! Oh my God! I hope the next time we see you in another reality, it’s one where you’ve decided to take sleeping pills! Do you _ever_ sleep?”

“Um, sorry?” Harry says. “Hey, how are you not all crippled from pain right now?”

“Why would I be? This is the reality I belong to,” Ruth says irritably.

“Oh, that’s how it works...”

“Could you tell if my dad’s alive in that reality?”

Harry needs a second to deduce this.

“He’s not,” he has to say. “We wouldn’t be home if he was alive. At this time in July, we were supposed to be touring Australia and New Zealand.”

Ruth’s lips tighten, then she says, “Our theory about two people increasing the chances of entering a specific reality is wrong, I guess.”

Harry’s not in absolute despair over this. It was their first go at it and it’ll just take some time. He’s more bowled over by the other Harry he saw.

“Excuse my language, Ruth, for what I’m gonna say,” he says. “But that was so fucking bizarre, seeing myself.”

“Twins experience it every day. And I’m fourteen. People at school swear all the time.”

“I didn’t realize how tall I am until now. I really noticed it when I saw myself at eye level.”

“Yep. You are tall.”

“Ruth, have you ever seen yourself?” Harry asks, then sees Ruth has sat down at her desk with a pen in her hand. “Ruth? What are you doing?”

“ _Harry._ Can you say something that doesn’t have an interrogation point at end of it?”

Harry chuckles off her annoyance and comes out with, “Hmm! I wonder what you’re writing about! I insist you tell me.”

“Ha,” Ruth says without looking at him.

“Ruth, I’m naturally gonna ask stuff I know little about...”

Harry felt he was around Ruth enough to pin her down as an ill-tempered girl. Harry had yet to know if it came from being a teenager, or if it was him as person that didn’t sit well with her, or if it was just a product of her experiences. Without a doubt, zipping in and out of realities would probably encroach on a person’s life somehow.

“I know, I know...” Ruth said tiredly. “I’m writing down notes, keeping track of where I’ve been and the rules about reality jumping that I pick up on. Just relax while I do this. Make yourself at home here. Welcome to Withern Rise, my house.”

“Withern Rise. That’s a pretty name.”

“Louis lived here for a while with my mother and me, before they split up.”

This information makes Harry want to explore the house. Being considerate though, he doesn’t want to bother Ruth with that request. He just waits quietly until she’s clutching his elbow again.

“You don’t have to think about Louis this time. We’ve discovered that it’s pointless, so,” Ruth says.

The ache of being transported is no less severe.

The first thing Harry senses from the new world is the tinkling of chimes and the humidity. The rest of the setting forms and they’re in a living room, behind a couch.

On the couch, with her back toward them, is Gemma. She stoops, rubbing at her legs. Her shoulders are shiny and her hair looks how it did when she was a teenager – flat and brown. Beyond the room, people are murmuring.

Harry ducks behind the couch. His jacket crumples, but luckily at that second, Gemma rises from the couch and it creaks noisily. Ruth puts her hand on him.

He hears Gemma step out of the room. He and Ruth find another exit and on their way out, Harry sees a clock that reads 10:30. Outside, the only way they can see is from the moonlight. There are woods at the side of the building, which is where they hide.


	9. Chapter 9

“We were so lucky, you don’t even know! God, if she just turned around –” Ruth says.

“We’re in a totally different timezone, that’s why my sister was awake. We’re five hours behind London time... We’re probably in the U.S. I guess she moved here?”

Harry and Ruth assess the house and its surroundings. They’re on a farm. There are chickens rustling their feathers behind a fence, and the backyard is acres and acres of land.

“The house is so dark. Is that a candle in the window?” Harry asks.

“Oh...”

“What?”

“I’ve been here before. Or another variation of it. Look over there,” Ruth says, pointing to the horizon. Sharp blocks of black, not that many, are poking up. Skyscrapers that aren’t lit. There’s no light at all coming from that city.

“Power outage?”

“The power has been out for a very long time. There was an epidemic here or something... I couldn’t tell you how many died, only that whoever’s left is back to living off the land. Your sister’s a farm girl now.”

“So... what about Louis?”

“My mum survived and in the five times I came here trying to land beside my father, I always ended up beside her. Never him.”

“You had a fifty-fifty shot. You can flip a coin five times and it can always be tails.”

“I think there’s more of a chance that whatever killed the human population took my dad as well. And it’s too scary here. I’ve seen dead bodies piled on the streets, looking like they got eaten up or shot in the head.”

Harry quakes. “Okay, we’ll leave.”

No pain, no gain, Harry has to repeat to himself when Ruth takes his arm again to transport.

The next reality they enter, they’re in a living room again. It’s very small and smells like weed.

Ruth is standing by Louis.

A bottle shatters – Louis dropped the beer he held in his hand.

“Shit! Where did you come from?!” Louis shouts at them. “Get out of my flat!”

Harry and Louis turn to face each other directly. Ruth scampers behind Harry.

“I –”

Harry can’t form the words. Louis is recognizable, just very different... His hair is greasy, and his cheeks are hollowed out. His skin is rough, especially around the eyes... He’s alarmingly dilapidated. His appearance, combined with the ferocious glare he’s giving Harry, doesn’t bring Harry any joy, it just brings terror.

“Get _out_! GET OUT!”

“Don’t you know who –” Ruth splutters.

“OUT!”

Louis gets Harry by the shoulders and launches him back into the wall.

“I have fuck-all here, mate!” Louis says, voice coarse, the way it gets when he’s sung too much. “Do you understand me? No drugs, no money. You chose a shit place to rob.”

“You’re hurting me...” Harry mumbles as Louis’ finger burrows under his collarbone.

Louis snorts. “That’s the point!”

Louis bashes Harry’s head back. Harry can’t believe this is Louis doing this.

“Stop!” Ruth yells.

Louis turns his head and looks confused by her presence, this young girl. Harry’s quick to switch into survival mode and he shoves Louis off. Tries, anyway. Louis still has him by the shoulders, pressing him harder into the wall.

“Whoever you are, I don’t fucking want you coming back here ever,” Louis states. 

He releases Harry. Harry nods dumbfounded and he and Ruth bolt out the room, passing empty bottles of vodka and beer and stepping on ash-filled carpet. Louis follows them to the door and shoves Harry through it, making him trip.

Outside of the flat now, and no one in the hall, Ruth immediately touches him and takes him home.

Harry arrives laying on the floor of the nursery. He gets himself up and starts to shake. Meanwhile, Ruth is frozen.

There was no full-bodied pain when he transported this time around, but Louis left him with sores on his back and his neck feels like it was loosened.

“Where’s the bathroom?” Ruth says. Her face has no animation in it. Harry though, believes that seeing such a violent and poor version of her father couldn't have done anything except upset her.

“Hey...” Harry whispers and squeezes her arm. He has a lot of sympathy. They’re both hurt by this.

“I’m asking you where the bathroom is,” Ruth states. 

Harry recognizes that she just really wants some privacy. He points her in the general direction of the bathroom and she leaves him in the nursery. He waits for her, watches Evan as he does, so that they can plan their next meeting. He knows both of them are too put out to keep going tonight.

Harry can’t keep his thoughts away from the Louis he just saw. It horrifies him and he feels very betrayed, like it was his own Louis who did that to him. He can’t reason himself out of the emotion, can’t make the divide between those two people.

Unable to hold himself together, he stops waiting for Ruth. He writes a quick note to her, “Come back two nights from now? We’ll keep looking for the nice Louis we know,” then goes into Zayn’s room and wakes him.

Zayn sees Harry standing over him with his hand covering his teary eyes. 

“Harry...” Zayn mutters and he pulls him onto the bed.

Harry’s overwhelmed; he couldn’t speak even if he were able to tell Zayn why exactly he was crying. Zayn drags himself up to rest against the headboard and Harry leans against him, goes underneath his arm. Zayn kisses the top of his head.

“You’ll get through this...” Zayn whispers.


	10. Chapter 10

Late in the morning while Zayn is still around, Harry goes for a swim in the pool. He’s trying to get the last traces of the encounter with Louis off him.

He takes his first full-body dip into the water and rises out again. The pool gushes and once it stops, the quiet that comes after invades his ears. He wonders why for just a second, until he remembers what’s missing.

Most of the time when Harry swam, Louis would be on the second floor where their piano was. Since his X-Factor days, he’d gone from childlike playing to striking full chords and doing trills, and he became a good enough player to boot Jon off the keyboard for a couple songs in their set, getting girls to scream.

In those times in the pool, the notes Louis would hit were nearly imperceptible to Harry from where he was. Halfway through a song though, Louis would hammer down on those keys, and that was why he waited for Harry to be outside the house.

Many of those songs he played were his own invention. Harry closes his eyes, trying to remember the order of notes, but he can’t. It’s like the silence that’s there now has completely muted his memory too. 

***

Within the days that pass, August begins. Harry’s desire to see Louis, one who’s more like his, hasn’t been put out at all. And luckily, Harry’s late-night fit of tears worried Zayn and convinced him he should stay at Harry’s for a while. He’ll be there for Evan.

Ruth shows up at three o’clock. She doesn’t acknowledge what had happened the other night. It’s Harry who brings it up. It’s too big of an event to ignore.

“You okay from the other night?” he asks.

“Yeah.Whatever.”

Harry lets it go. Ruth has a barrier up and he senses that it’ll strengthen the more he pesters her.

The first reality they go to, they find themselves by a river with no one around. Ruth moves onto the next reality right away, explaining to Harry that no one from their families could be alive if they didn’t land beside anyone, and that includes Louis.

The second reality: They appear next to Harry’s mother. Things go smoothly here. She’s asleep on her bed and doesn’t wake up, nor does his stepfather who’s at her side. As they slip out of the house, Harry realizes that this his childhood home in Holmes Chapel.

Things go so well, they find telling clues into his life there. On the counter in the kitchen is an array of pill containers. On the labels, each one is prescribed to Harry. So another Harry is probably in his old bedroom, sleeping... An ill one.

“Jesus...” Harry has to say because there’s so much medication. They all have strange names he’s never seen before like “Fanapt.” 

Before they make it to the side door, he spots a photograph hanging on the wall. Him, Zayn, Niall, Liam, and even Josh are in it, along with a couple unknown girls. They’re young; Harry can see that based on his plump cheeks. No Louis though.

He and Ruth walk down the road, hoping for an open internet connection. It takes them two blocks before that happens.

Ruth gets out her iPad, as does Harry. Knowing Ruth’s the one searching Louis’ name, he looks up “One Direction.” Nothing comes up, just an American band that’s definitely not them. How did he meet all the boys then, in this reality?

“The only Louis Tomlinson that comes up is... like... a character from some book?” Ruth says. “And you’re...”

“Maybe he has a different last name here,” Harry says. “Try Louis Troy Austin.”

A minute later: “Nothing. Just Troy Austin... We could call him, ask about Louis?”

That’s what they do. They find Troy’s home number online easy enough. Harry starts to direct Ruth to the closest payphone, but she hesitates.

“I wanna check something else first,” she says. “Give me a couple minutes.”

“Why?”

“Nevermind why.”

Harry sticks his hands in his pockets and waits. She taps away on her iPad. Harry makes out that she’s typed the name “Alaric Underwood” in it.

“Who’s Alaric?”

“It’s the male version of my mother. If he exists here, then my mum doesn’t.”

“I don’t get it. Why do you wanna know if your mum’s here?”

“For my notes,” Ruth says and shrugs. 

It turns out there is an Alaric Underwood, living in Withern Rise, the exact same house. After that, Harry guides Ruth to the payphone a few more blocks down.

Ruth calls. Troy picks up despite the obnoxiously late hour, and Ruth unapolotegically asks if he knows Louis’ number. Harry can hear Troy’s befuddlement through the phone.

“Whose number?” 

“Louis... Your son.”

“Wrong number, miss. I have no children.”

Ruth hangs up.

“Onto reality number six...” Harry says with a sigh.

***

They transport to Gemma, who looks much like the one from Harry’s home reality. But she’s sleeping in a much smaller bedroom here.

They sneak through the house and realize it’s not a house, it’s a flat. They pass an open door and spot yet another Harry asleep in there.

Once they get out of the flat, Harry says, “I’ll take an educated guess and say One Direction doesn’t exist here ‘cause why would I be living with my sister in a tiny flat like that?”

“True…” Ruth says and takes a look around. “Are we in London?”

“Yeah. I pass through this area sometimes.”

Shops line the road they’re on, which gives them hope that there’ll be a 24-hour place somewhere with wi-fi. They aren’t let down. A McDonald’s is on the corner. The three customers in it consists of a drunk, a businessman in a wrinkled suit, and a bohemian lady.

As Ruth takes their bags and sets herself up at a table by the window, Harry orders drinks for her and himself.

When Harry comes back with a chocolate milk and coffee, Ruth is scrolling through search results.

“Any sign of Louis?”

“No, I thought you could look him up.”

Harry sees that she’s typed in Alaric Underwood again. While waiting for his iPad to connect, he spots her moving onto a search for herself. A new thought, something he feels stupid for not wondering before, crosses his mind:

“Can the other Ruths in the universe jump between realties too?”

Ruth’s face scrunches up. Louis, there’s Louis again in that expression. “I’ve only come across a couple other Ruths, and none of them can. Doesn’t rule out the possibility though.”

Harry imagines how surreal it would be if suddenly another Ruth appeared beside them. It seemed inconsequential though, to their mission, if there were multiple Ruths with the same capability.

The search results for Louis are numerous. Harry delves into a Twitter profile and sees the profile picture is yes, of Louis.

“He’s alive here…” Harry says breathlessly and suddenly it’s hard to keep his fingers steady on the iPad screen to check what Louis has written.

_Me and Eli! On the pacific!!!!_

Louis links to a picture and Harry’s stomach drops when it loads. A tall blonde man is holding Louis around the waist, looking into the camera. Louis’ gaze is elsewhere, but he has a content grin on his face.

Harry tries to be rational about this. This is a different reality. There’s no One Direction so Louis probably never met him.

His cheeks burn up. Ruth is peering at him.

“He’s dating someone else here,” Harry states, trying to match the detachment Ruth has.

Ruth nods solemnly. “Well. You have put some distance between yourself and him. He’s different, he’s not really the person you—”

“I know,” Harry says.

“Yeah, and… at least we finally found a reality where he’s alive. We’ll go to him. Figure out where he lives.”

The sense of betrayal is the bitter pill Harry has to swallow, and he does. He reads other tweets by Louis, and from what he gathers, Louis no longer lives in England – he’s moved to Vancouver, Canada with this other man. Harry tells Ruth this.

“Hmm. That makes things complicated,” Ruth says, tapping her fingers on the table. “We can’t visit him tonight. Vancouver’s hours behind this timezone, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’d be…” Harry says, looking up to the ceiling. “Yeah, it’d be like eight in the evening there.”

“We can’t go. Not now, I mean. We could come back here tomorrow though, at a time when he’d be asleep. If we get lucky, we’ll be transported directly to him.”

They discuss it more, working around the difference in time. It’s dangerous, they realize. If they wanted to be certain that Louis was asleep on their arrival, to be there at maybe two o’clock in the morning in his timezone, it meant they’d have to jump into that reality sometime at 10 a.m, London time. But there was more of a chance that they’d land where their other relatives were, and they were in England, and almost all definitely awake at 10 o’clock.

They can’t figure out any foolproof way – not even flying over there was an option when passports were a further complication.

“I’m willing to risk freaking out our family. It’s our only choice,” Ruth says.

“’Fraid so,” Harry says. “Whoever we turn up beside… We’ll take off on them like we did in Reality 1.”

“Reality 1? The one where we saw you and Chloe?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Nothing else we could do.”

Harry stretches himself out. Seeing as they’ve accomplished what they could for the night – they found a living Louis and made a plan, he says, “Good… Take me back home now?”

“No… I want to stay here,” Ruth says cryptically.

She props her iPad screen toward him, where it has her picture on it. Below it, there’s a block of text:

_Ruth Alexandra Tomlinson, 13, of Stamford, UK, succumbed to her injuries in Morton General Hospital on June 4, 2024. Ruth is survived by her parents Naia Underwood and Louis Tomlinson, her grandparents, other many other members of her extended family..._

“Oh...” Harry says. “How did you die?”

“Car accident.”

“Must be eerie...”

“My mum was driving. She survived. I didn’t,” Ruth says clinically, then, looking at Harry directly, “I wanna go see her.”

“To… to what? You aren’t going to talk to her, are you?”

“No… No, I just want a glimpse of her, like how I want a glimpse of my father.”

“But what’s the point?”

“Back home, it’s inverted. It’s my mum who’s dead and not me,” Ruth explains, pointing to herself. “The car wreck happened there too.”

All these realities, searching for Alaric to know if Naia existed in them, made sense now. Along with Louis, she wanted to find her mother.

“I’m sorry about your mum,” Harry says. “I really am.”

“Yep. Everyone is,” Ruth says, avoiding his gaze by peering out the window.

Harry’s tempted to hug her, now that he knows. She’s an orphan. Suddenly, her snippy manners weren’t off-putting, they were sad.

Ruth shrugs. “Well, I’ll get what I want. I’ve found out both my parents are alive here, and they’re like, _actually_ my parents... That’s lucky. I’ve seen my mum in other realities, except I wasn’t born in those ones... It makes a difference if I was in her life. And now I’ve found her, and to top it off, I found my daddy too.”

Ruth looks away from Harry again, looks off to the side. A fraction of smile shows up on her face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to those readers who are sticking with this story... This was meant to be short with Louis already in here, however, the plot is telling me that I can't do it yet, but I swear, Louis will get here!


	11. Chapter 11

Their first thought was to have Ruth zap out then back into the reality they were currently in. It was the fastest way to get to her mother who was over an hour away living in Withern Rise. As efficient as that would be, it was also risky – there was a good chance of Ruth getting transported to Louis, who’d be awake in his part of the world.

So Ruth takes the train. Harry goes with her – he’s the one with money for the ride and she’s too young to go anywhere by herself in the dead of night. They take a cab to a station and a half hour later, they’re boarding a train headed for Stamford.

Harry doesn’t mind that his time and money are being used. He’s used to travelling all over and he likes being generous in this way, to someone who deserves it.

A few minutes into the ride, Harry realizes something regarding their plan to meet Louis:

“Before I see Louis, I should figure out if he knows me, shouldn’t I? If he doesn’t, then I can be out the open when I see him. ‘Cause he, you know, won’t recognize me, won’t think I’m a crazy stalker for showing up in Canada when I should be in England.”

Ruth, who’s sitting in the row of seats behind him, throws her head back. “Oh, you’re right! I should’ve thought of that earlier… We can change our plans. We can… we can look online or call your mum or something when we get to Withern and see if she’s ever heard you mention a Louis.”

During the rest of the ride, Ruth turns into what Harry expects a young girl to be – she’s lively. While Harry is sitting there imagining what it’ll be like to see Louis, he feels her pluck a curl on top of his head.

“Heeeey!” Harry says and swipes her hand away. She giggles.

“In the first couple months that me and your dad met, he was always doing that,” Harry adds.

“Was he?”

“Yeah. During our rehearsals for X-Factor, he’d tug my hair to the beat of the song.”

“Funny. My mum said he’d do that to her when they were at bootcamp.”

“Like... X-Factor bootcamp?”

“Yeah, in my reality, that’s where they met. She was working there in the summer of 2009.”

“Crazy... Louis in my world tried out for X-Factor in 2009 too, except he didn’t make the cut.”

“Yep. Which led him to you instead of my mum.”

“That 2009 audition was like, a major catalyst then.”

“Yeah,” Ruth says. “So when my dad played with Evan, did he sing and make up songs?”

“Totally,” Harry said, grinning.

“From what I can remember, he was always being silly with me. He’d do a chicken dance and try to teach me.”

“Sounds exactly like the Louis I knew.”

Harry contorts himself in order to see Ruth between the seats. He grins at her, feeling connected to this person, for once. It was strange to think about, but Ruth was basically his stepdaughter. Louis would probably like Ruth to open up to him.

***

For the first time, Harry sees Withern Rise from the outside, not just Ruth’s bedroom. It’s an old English home, sturdy and expansive but definitely old. 

A film of sweat has formed on his forehead. They had to walk here; Stamford was too small a town to justify a frequent bus route into the area at this hour. Not that the walk was vigorous – it was the run. Ruth insisted to do it halfway into the walk.

“It’s a little after 6. She’d be up,” Ruth says. Her face has gone back to being blank. 

“Are you nervous?”

“Excited and nervous,” Ruth says, eyeing a window. In it, the light has been turned on and it reflects off a chrome refridgerator.

Harry and Ruth get behind a thick tall tree to sneak glances and wait for her mother to appear...

In a loose navy t-shirt, Naia Underwood enters the kitchen. She yawns as she walks over to a counter.

Being on the outskirts of town, it’s very quiet, so Harry hears Ruth’s breathing speed up.

“Mommy...” she whispers.

She springs up and starts jogging toward the front door.

Harry’s eyes bug out. “Ruth! Get back here!” he whispers loudly.

Even if she did come back, it wouldn’t have mattered – Naia is looking out the window, having spotted the movement. She darts out of the kitchen.

Harry swears. How can Ruth be this stupid?

The front door opens as Ruth reaches the doormat. The mother and daughter freeze, coming to grips with who’s in front of them.

Harry stays where he is and watches, doesn’t chase after Ruth, and it’s not because he’s that remarkably kind-hearted. He’s sure that it would take a horrible person to drag daughter away from her mother.

But he can feel the mess happening, two jagged edges sawing into each other, clattering, trying to make themselves fit, chips coming off each piece.

Naia covers her mouth.

“Where did – how could you be alive? How can you be here right now?” she says in a small voice.

“I’m just here, mum...”

“You’re dead...”

“I’m not... I... I brought myself back,” Ruth says and touches her mother’s arm.

Both of them start crying. Under normal circumstances, Harry would too except he’s panicked about all this. This would become chaos. At least Ruth didn’t reveal anything to her mother.

They embrace. Naia’s legs give out and they sink to their knees, refusing to break apart. Ruth’s satchel sags over the step.

“I don’t understand... I don’t understand...” Naia says.

“I missed you so much.”

“Where were you?”

“Somewhere without you.”

Naia starts rocking her daughter and keeps repeating, “I don’t understand.”

They hug for so long that the sky becomes a dark blue and Withern Rise’s colours brighten. Harry’s insides are rattling from impatience and the fear that Ruth will never let go of her mother.

Ruth proves she’s retained some sense and gets up eventually.

“Mum, I’ve got a random question for you... Do you know if dad ever knew a Harry?”

“Harry, um... I wouldn’t know, Ruth,” Naia says. “You know your dad and me aren’t that close.”

“Okay,” Ruth says. “Mum, I’ll be back soon. I need to take care of something first. Don’t tell anyone I’m back yet, okay?”

Her mother is horrified by this. Ruth has to repeat herself several times before Naia’s capable of letting her walk away, back down the path that leads to the street. Harry has to be sneakier by rushing behind a fence and getting onto the street via the side lawn.

Ruth is on the pavement, pulling out her iPad from her bag. She’s grinning slightly.

Harry wants to scold her. The only reason he doesn’t is that he’s trying to focus on Louis.

In silence, they connect their iPads to Withern Rise’s internet and try to find the phone number of Anne, Harry’s mother, the one family member who was likely to remember a Louis in Harry’s life. They discover her number’s unlisted though. Harry assumes he could just try out the number she has in his home reality, until he sees that her profile on Facebook states she now lives in Manchester.

To be thorough in his research, he goes through Louis’ Facebook friends and Twitter followers to see if he was in there somewhere. Nothing online indicates that the Harry of this reality knows Louis. He can’t completely rely on these accounts though...

Ruth meanwhile, isn’t doing anything very helpful. She absent-mindedly scrolls through the results for “Harry Styles” on her screen and says, “Your LinkedIn account says you work as an office clerk at Rowl and Bach Corporation...”

Harry can’t leave it alone, what Ruth had done.

“Ruth. Hey. You said you wanted to get a glimpse of her...” Harry says softly. He’s mortified, would like to lay into her, but he was averse to confrontation, especially when it was up against someone in such pitiful circumstances.

“Yeah, I know. That was my intention,” Ruth says lightly.

“You’re messing with natural order, aren’t you? I’m sorry, but this isn’t _right_.”

Ruth’s smile has dimmed only a little. Through it, she says, “I know... and I don’t care.”

Harry rubs his forehead. In the same soft voice, he says, “This is unfair to this reality’s Naia though – you aren’t her real daughter. And then there’s your real mother – you’re betraying her too. This isn’t fair to anybody...”

“Whatever. I have mum back and my dad’s here too.”

“Ruth... Come on...”

“I saw her and I just couldn’t help it.”

“I don’t get it. You seemed to have it so together this whole time...”

“You don’t know what it’s like.”

Harry shakes his head at this hackneyed statement, despite it being true. He wasn’t a teenager who lost his parents; he was a grown man who lost his husband.

“Get me home, okay?” Harry says, putting away his iPad. There was nothing else he could do here and he needed to be home now.

Ruth nods.


	12. Chapter 12

Before Ruth takes out the anchor from Harry’s reality, from the ground she scoops up a small round rock. She gets out a new pouch from her satchel.

“This is the sixth reality we’ve visited together, right?”

“Yeah.”

Ruth pops the rock in and jiggles the pouch. “There. Our anchor for Reality 6.”

When they appear in the nursery, Harry goes right to Evan. He gurgles a little.

Before Ruth leaves, she asks Harry if he still wants to figure out if he and Louis know each other. Harry leads her into the sitting room to discuss it so they won’t wake up Zayn.

Harry thinks it’s worth it. It would make all the difference if he knew he could talk to Louis rather than just peer at him from a distance (though he wouldn’t go as far as Ruth did with her mother).

Based off the evidence online, he hasn’t met Louis in that world, however he’s wary about the conclusion and not knowing bothers him. There’s still a chance they met – there being no One Direction didn’t mean a whole lot. They might not have met in 2010, but it didn’t rule out the rest of the time they were alive.

“Cool,” Ruth says once Harry’s explained, clapping her hands together. “It’ll be easy – before you meet my dad, I’ll meet him, and after he freaks out that I’m back, I’ll ask him about you.”

“What? No, no, Ruth, you really shouldn’t reveal yourself to him.”

“I may as well since my mom knows I’m alive now.”

“Ruth. I’m serious. I’d rather do it the hard way and have to ask around.”

“What are our other options then? The internet hasn’t helped.”

Harry has to think for a bit. He goes over to Evan’s crib. “We’ll ask Harry himself. We’ll jump into that reality as many times as we have to until we’re beside Gemma, in her and Harry’s flat.”

He explains it further. Considering that Harry of Reality 6 worked in an office, it was safe to say that he worked from 9 to 5 and didn’t have a vehicle, which meant he probably took the bus or train to work. Wherever he waited to be picked up, that’s where Ruth would meet him and try to strike up a conversation.

“I can’t go up to him though – what if he knows my dad after all, and knows me as well?” Ruth asks.

“Slim chance, isn’t it? Me and Louis aren’t connected over the internet there, so at best, we met at a party once or twice. I wouldn’t know you. We’re good to go.”

***

Harry wakes up very early the next morning, before dawn. He’s warned Zayn the night before that he’s going to work out at the local gym and will be running errands, so he won’t be back for a couple hours. Harry kisses Evan before Ruth comes and they return to Reality 6.

Luck is almost on their side – first time they transport, they’re beside Harry’s mother. On their second try, they show up beside Gemma, where they need to be.

Outside, though it’s a warm morning, Harry puts on a oversized jacket. Across and further down the street, there’s a coffee shop and Harry judges it as a good spot to wait for the other Harry. They take a table by the window and from there, they can see the little door that Harry would come out of.

Harry instructs Ruth on what to do. Her number one goal should be to tell him her full name, and that’ll probably perk the other Harry’s ears, if he knew of Louis. If she has to, she’ll get on the bus to keep him talking until she gets the information they need.

Once he’s done, there’s a lull and Harry peers over at Ruth.

“I have to ask – did you go back to visit your mum?” he says impassively.

Ruth nods. “I spent most of yesterday with her.”

Harry sighs. “What if she’s told Louis and your other relatives by now?”

“She hasn’t. I told her not to. Not yet.”

“It’s a bad idea, Ruth.”

Ruth scowls. “I’m not talking about this with you.”

Harry shrugs and continues watching the road. If he presses her any further, she might refuse to take him to Louis.

At a quarter to 8, the other Harry comes out of the flat. Ruth and Harry bolt out of the coffee shop and into the street. The other Harry walks down the pavement, away from them. He has a striped dress shirt on, without the tie and his hair is tamed, quite flat and thinned out.

From his bag, Harry pulls out a pair of chunky Ray Bans to conceal his face. The jacket he’s wearing has a hood, so he tugs that up too. He gets his fringe to fall down further down his face, covering an eye. Ruth chuckles at him for this.

“Gangsta,” Harry mutters.

As they anticipated, the other Harry stops at a bus shelter. He doesn’t go into it – he leans on it, on the glass.

“Okay, okay... remember to mention your name to him,” Harry whispers quickly to Ruth. “That’s the most important thing.”

Ruth nods, all business now, which puts Harry at ease. She goes forth and Harry stays back. He finds a lamppost within earshot of the bus shelter, and he goes and leans on it, back toward Ruth and the other Harry. He bows his head and tries to listen to Ruth as best as he can.

A few anxious seconds pass, and Ruth opens up with, “Excuse me, what bus is coming by next?”

“The 194. Goes to Sutton Station.”

“Thank you,” Ruth says.

“You’re welcome.”

There’s a lapse. Harry thinks, _Go on. Say something! Pull him in..._

“Getting around London is so complicated,” Ruth says.

“Yeah,” other Harry says. “I imagine you’re not from around here?”

“No, I’m from, um,” Ruth says. “I’m from Doncaster.”

_Good move,_ Harry thinks.

“Doncaster, really? I’ve been there, actually.”

“Really? What for?”

“I visited there a few times, when I was young.”

“Just for fun?”

The other Harry chuckles. “Yeah... for fun. Fun with my boyfriend, I suppose.”

Over at the lamppost, Harry gnaws at his bottom lip.

“Oh, right,” Ruth says. “What... what was your boyfriend’s name? Maybe I know him.”

“Louis Tomlinson.”

Knowing that, Harry feels settled.


	13. Chapter 13

“Right, he’s... He’s a cousin of mine,” Ruth lies rather convincingly.

“Are you kidding?” the other Harry says. “I know Doncaster isn’t big, but I wasn’t actually expecting you to know him! What’s your name?”

“It’s Ruth.”

“Hi Ruth. I’m Harry. So how’s Louis doing?”

“Good. He’s great.”

“Yeah?”

Ruth steers the conversation in a different direction by asking, “When did you date him?”

“Way back in high school. I was fifteen, he was seventeen. Very scandalous, you know. Huge age difference.”

“Why didn’t it work out?”

“Oh, stupid reasons. I lived in Cheshire, first of all, so we couldn’t see each other often, and you know, we were young. I broke up with him because he said – oh the bus is here – he said I was annoying this one time. Just silly teenage reasons.”

The bus pulls up and its engine covers the conversation. The last bit Harry can hear is:

“If you lived in Cheshire, how did you meet in the first place?”

“At a concert in Manchester. The Script were playing a show.”

Harry smiles gently and shakes his head in amazement, because of course, in his home reality, they both went to that same concert. It was before X-Factor, a little over a year before. However, they never met there. It turns out he was in the reality where they did.

It was too awkward for Ruth to not get on the bus. In the coffee shop, Harry had told Ruth that if that happened, she should stay on it until the terminal, and Harry would meet her there. However, as Harry walks along the road, searching for a cab, he sees Ruth coming down the road. She had gotten off at the very next stop, he can safely assume.

Harry rushes over to her.

“The Script concert. Oh my God, I’m thick!” he says. “I should’ve thought about all these connections and possibilities more. In my reality, me and Louis went to —”

“I know. I read about that while I was in your reality. You were both at the same concert, but you didn’t meet, and wow, here it’s so amazing that you did. Fate’s brought you together – great!”

The buoyancy Ruth’s maintained since the trip to Withern Rise had sunk severely. Her back is stooped and her mouth’s neutral state is a frown.

“Um...”

“It’s time to go,” Ruth says.

***

“Ruth, why are you like this? You’re giving me the death glare,” Harry says once they’re back in the nursery.

Ruth glowers even more at him.

“Explain,” Harry says and brings them to his bedroom for privacy since Zayn’s somewhere in the house.

“If it makes it any clearer, in my reality, my father went to The Script concert too,” Ruth says. “And like in this reality, that Harry didn’t meet him there.”

“Okay, that’s cool?”

“You’re an idiot.”

“What are you –”

“You don’t see the pattern!”

“Tell me then,” Harry says, forcing his voice to stay cool.

Ruth sighs, though she does it heavily, making it sound like a heave. She throws out her arms as she explains:

“Think about all the links between our realities. It’s like fate and free will are in this constant battle with each other, and fate is trying to put you and my dad together,” she says. “It all starts at the Script concert. In the one we just came from, Reality 6, you and Louis met there, but in the end, your relationship didn’t last. Fate acted too early. Harry Styles in 2009 wasn’t yet the person who could be in love with Louis. You weren’t mature enough.

“Now think about my reality – you two don’t meet at the concert, and Louis auditions for X-Factor in 2009, passes, meets my mum there, and never meets you. It’s like you were a step closer to being together, by virtue of not meeting too early. Right?”

“Right...”

“Then there’s this reality right here,” Ruth says, pointing to the floor. “You don’t meet at the concert, Louis fails the 2009 audition, so he never meets my mum. So my birth isn’t preventing him from going to audition in 2010. Then he gets to meet you. As far we know, it’s the closest fate has come to winning.”

“Oh...”

“But it lost because? You tell me, Harry.”

“Louis died three months ago here.”

“Yes. Fate screwed up again. Don’t you see what this means?”

“It’s trying to put me and Louis together... It’s like... it’s like it keeps fixing itself, making all these realities where it’s closer and closer to having us stay together.”

Harry realizes he’s beaming, almost tearing up over the revelation. The universe knows he and Louis need to be connected...

“It’s romantic, isn’t it?” Ruth says. The moment she finishes the sentence, her face contorts and she’s weeping.

“Why are you crying?”

“Because where does this leave _me_? And the family that I know?” Ruth says. “If you and Louis are meant to be together, then I’m not meant to exist. Naia Underwood and Louis Tomlinson weren’t supposed to meet, ever. It’s you two. Harry and Louis.”

Ruth swallows hard, then continues, “I’m collateral damage. My family – the three of us together, we’re not how things are meant to be. We mean nothing.”

“Ruth...” Harry’s unsure of what else he can say.

“No, see... Reality 6 is the closest I’ve gotten to having a perfect family. Both my parents are alive there, and I was alive up until a few months ago. Now I know why I haven’t found a reality where we’re all alive – we’re a mistake. That reality doesn’t exist. The universe doesn’t care if we die. Fate fights for _you_ , it doesn’t fight for me!”

Harry’s usually all right at comforting people. When it’s about something otherwordly, miles away from his realm of knowledge, he doesn’t. He bows his head, and mutters, “Sorry...”

Ruth grabs the pouch around her neck. “I’m going now.”

“Wait, Ruth... are you coming back? You said we’d go find Louis in Van— _Ruth_.”

Ruth heads towards the nursery.

“You’re coming back, aren’t you?”

Ruth shrugs.

Harry’s eyes widen and he leaps for nursery. “Ruth!”

She’s shutting the door behind her. Harry pushes into it, and tries to cram his arm into the thin opening. There’s about two seconds of struggle. Suddenly, the door flies open from all the force Harry’s put on it and he thumps onto the carpet. Ruth’s not there anymore.

Evan starts at the sound. He immediately wails. Harry nearly does the same.


	14. Chapter 14

**September 2024**

“Niall, buddy, you gotta stop moving so much – you keep going out of frame.”

The director strides in front of them. He takes Niall by the shoulders and shifts him closer to Liam.

“One more little thing, guys. Remember to space yourselves out more when we pan out – there’s floor to cover.”

The director gets behind the camera again.

While the whole tour was cancelled when Louis died, Harry and the rest of the boys agreed that they’d shoot a music video for their second single off the album. The video has a simple concept – them up against a stark white background and in the editing room, the filmmakers would intersperse their performance with old footage of Louis.

Take after take, Harry’s surprising himself with his focus. He likes that there’s something for him to do again. Ever since Ruth left, he more or less reverted to how he was the first couple weeks after the funeral – spacey, hypersensitive, and unable to be alone. It was almost like Louis had died all over again.

Almost. Ruth had shrugged when Harry asked if she’d come back. The shrug is Harry’s crutch. Living with the uncertainty wasn’t exactly peaceful, but it was a step up from knowing she’d never return.

At night, he rolled Evan’s crib right against his bed. He figured that Ruth, even if she didn’t want to see Harry, might want to see Evan. So far, it hadn’t happened.

He tries to accept that all the moments he had with Louis are finite. It’d be easier to go on like that if he managed that. It would prepares him for the worst case scenario, the scenario being that Ruth won’t be back.

He’s not doing it very well so far. Every time he repeats to himself that he won’t see Louis again, his grief bowls him over and he twists the bedsheets beside him. It’s an ache worse than what rocked him as he travelled between realities.

Ruth comes back though.

That night after shooting the video, she appears beside Evan’s crib and stays put when Harry notices her shadow. He turns on the lamp.

“Ruth...” Harry says with embarrassing desperation.

They sit on the edge of his bed in silence. Ruth’s gone small – she keeps her arms crossed over her belly and her head’s bowed.

“I’m really, really sorry that I left you,” she mutters, her voice small as well. “I was angry and I put the blame on you when you didn’t deserve it. I’m over that though. I can’t... I need to deal with my own reality, just, you know... just _deal_ with it. Just deal with the fact that it was meant for you, not for me.”

Harry shakes his head. “You know, there could be a reality where your family is together and alive, everyone happy. How do you know that’s not true?”

“I don’t,” Ruth says, shrugging. “I’m not going into these realities anymore anyway... I’d rather not know the truth.”

“That’s probably a sound decision,” Harry says and puts his hand on Ruth’s shoulder.

“I left Reality 6 for good. I was ruining everything, I really was. It was unfair, like you said and it couldn’t have worked out... I denied all that because I wanted my family so bad,” Ruth states. “Anyway... I saw my mum for the last time just a few hours ago. She thinks she’ll wake up and find me in my bedroom, but I won’t be there.”

Ruth says that in an even voice, then she blubbers out, “It’s the hardest thing I had to do.”

Harry hugs her as she cover her face.

“It had to be done...”

Ruth sniffs and pulls herself up.

“I’ll be glad to take you to Louis though.”

“Okay... Okay,” Harry says breathlessly.

From her satchel, Ruth tugs out a pouch. On it in marker, she’s written “21” on it.

“That’s not from Reality 6, is it?”

“No, it’s not...” Ruth says. “Once I let go of my resentment, I spent the next weeks trying to find a Louis that was actually yours, in the present, not the husband of someone else. I think you deserve that... To have a Louis who’s familiar, like how I got to see a familiar version of my mom. It’s hard, but...”

Harry smiles, a dumbfounded smile for her sudden kindness. She takes something else out her bag. Folded paper, crumpled at the edges.

“Here... I may or may not have stolen this.”

“What is...” Harry says as he flattens the paper, then he starts reading:

_Dear Harry,_

_You not being here isn’t getting any easier. Liam keeps telling me it will and I don’t know anymore. The only thing that makes me smile is Evan. I’m really thankful he’s here..._

“What is this?” Harry asks.

“This is from a reality where everything you know has happened. You met my dad and the rest of the band, you two lived in this same house, had Evan, everything... One major difference though,” Ruth says. “You were the one on the stage when the lights fell. It’s Louis who’s left.”

Harry feels the way Ruth must have when she saw her obituary. Kind of mangled. Thrown away. And now Louis is writing to him, not _him_ but the Harry who died, like he did with his grandmother.

He continues reading:

_... otherwise, I don’t know what I’d do with myself. Just stay in bed, probably. You’re such a massive part of my life. I can’t figure out how I’m gonna go back to normal._

“I trust you, that you won’t do what I did. That you can pull away,” Ruth says. “It’s heartbreaking to leave once you’ve seen them, but it’s nice, really, to see them at all.”

Harry folds up the paper again. His hand brushes over the pouch Ruth’s holding.

“Let’s go then,” Ruth says.


	15. Chapter 15

**March 2044**

Harry absently picks at the fabric of the armchair. Across from him, Evan, now twenty years old, sits on the couch along with his sister Charlotte. Their expressions contrast – Charlotte’s mouth is agape in wonder and Evan frowns in annoyance. For the past half hour, Harry’s been telling them about his journey into alternate realities.

Harry’s gaze goes to the floor, to Charlotte’s flip-flops and bare ankles. Her toes are unfortunately a trait she carried on from him.

In his head, Harry arranges the words he wants to carefully say.

“A few days later... Ruth took me to that reality,” Harry says. “There, we hid near the house, waiting for Louis to come out of the front door...”

“Did it look the same as ours? The house with just dad in it?” Charlotte asks.

“From the outside it did, yeah. We –”

“Wait, dad,” Evan says, brow furrowed. “You got to see him alive, and you don’t want us to see anyone? Not him, and not even gran?”

Anne. Two weeks ago, she died of pneumonia. When Harry told his children the news, the three of them laid on his bed to take it in. Charlotte’s reaction was the worst – she sobbed and what Harry thought might happen, did – the walls around them shifted and their bodies tensed with pain.

When it stopped, Harry turned his head and saw his mother standing over him, able-bodied and fresh – and very confused. Three seconds went by, and Harry and his children snapped back to their home reality, on the bed, in their house.

It was because of Charlotte. She wasn’t quite like Ruth though – she couldn’t enter other worlds as a child, not until Anne died. Despite that, Harry knew there was a possibility of it because when she was little, she would talk about her dreams, how she’d see Gemma working on a farm or Harry asleep in a cramped flat. Other realities – that’s what she dreamed of.

Harry never told her why her dreams were like that. But now, Charlotte had caught on with what she could do and she, along with Evan, were determined to find another reality with their grandmother alive in it. They were just like him and Ruth twenty years ago – desperate from sorrow.

“I’m not done with the story,” Harry says to Evan.

Evan sets himself back on the couch. Harry has to pause again.

His children won’t like this ending.

“See... I waited for an hour near the house... Then I turned away,” he says.

Charlotte and Evan’s faces dimmed as he anticipated.

“I told Ruth to take me home. So she did.”

“Why?” Evan asks.

“Because while I waited there, I started to lose it. I was going crazy over the fact that Louis was alive inside that house, and I had the insane urge to do what Ruth did – I wanted to let Louis see me, and tell him everything. I would’ve forced myself into his life after that. And I knew him well enough that he’d want me to do it. We wouldn’t have cared about the consequences. He was, you know, too close to the version of Louis I knew, and we were both in too much grief to not do it.

“I had just enough sense to break away from that reality before he came out of the house,” Harry continues. “If we did meet it would’ve been... unfaithful. Pretty much a betrayal against the versions of us who died. It would’ve hurt that living Louis too – barging in on his life like that would’ve prevented him from living like he should. I might’ve left him with a sadder life, but at least it was a normal one. So I was being considerate. To everyone. Except maybe myself.”

“Are you saying we should settle with what we have?” Charlotte asks.

Harry nods. He really believed it was better this way. His son and daughter were too young to be doing this. They’d be like Ruth and make a mistake. It took maturity, an understanding of what death was, to dig around in other realities, and Harry had that. The past twenty years, he wasn’t tortured by what he chose to do since he did nothing to damage the natural order of things. Ruth wasn’t so lucky in that regard.

Harry though, left out a major part of the story. He had to leave it out for Charlotte and Evan’s sake or else they’d hop into that reality with Anne in it. Harry’s story would count for nothing if he admitted that yes, he did go see Louis eventually.

He had understood something that let him meet him then leave him for good. Since then, he’s never had the need to see Louis again. He wasn’t sure that his children could grasp that yet.


	16. Chapter 16

**September 2024**

“You made a good call,” Ruth says when they get back to Harry’s home. “You didn’t screw everything up first like me.”

Harry closes his eyes tight. His choice was as good as it was, was painful as well.

“It was... I don’t know, it was mostly that he would’ve been almost exactly the Louis from this reality. Like – the Louis who attacked us that one time, I was able to get over that, you know? It was easy to pull away from him,” Harry explains.

“Right, I get it.”

“And there was no Harry there to keep me away from this one... That made it really tempting.”

Harry sits down on the chair at the corner of his bedroom.

“So... so...” Ruth says. Her eyes narrow; she’s calculating something.

“What?”

“As long as Louis is different and there’s another Harry, that’s when you think you could see him and not do anything stupid?”

“Yeah.”

“I found a reality like that once. It might be the one where fate got it to be perfect.”

***

A week later, Ruth brings Harry to that reality.

There, Harry and Louis live at Withern Rise.

Ruth’s looked into it, spent some time learning about the past. She tells Harry that Alaric Underwood moved out of the house a couple years ago, and it was sold to Harry and Louis. Harry must be the one with a well-paying job to have afforded Withern because Louis came out of a shopping centre at every day. They have no children, and they’ve been together somewhere around six years.

There was no One Direction either, Ruth discovered, and that’s why they’re both alive. No accidents on stage if there was no band. Fate went the extra mile in this reality though: Zayn, Liam, and Niall live in

Rossgrove, the next town over. The three of them, including Louis and Harry, are in a band together, a local one who regularly plays at one of the pubs.

In observing Harry and Louis’ routines, Ruth saw there was an opportunity for the Harry she knew to actually talk to Louis of Withern. She noticed a pattern: At 5:15, the other Harry rolls into the driveway and by 5:30, he goes out for a run and doesn’t come back for an hour. In that hour, Louis gets home.

Ruth and Harry go over what he needs to do to make this meeting work. There’s nothing to be incredibly concerned about . The main thing is that Harry can’t encounter the second Harry. He has to keep his time with Louis to a limit.

From the side of the house, concealed by some bushes, Harry and Ruth wait for the other Harry to come out. When he does, that’s when Harry’s limbs quake from nervousness and excitement. Louis. He was coming very soon.

Harry sets himself near the front door, pulls weeds from the garden as a plausible reason for being outside. He just hopes this is a thing that the other Harry does. He tugs up the collar of his shirt, making sure his tattoo of the birds will be covered when Louis arrives. Ruth said the other Harry didn’t have the same tattoos.

A small car pulls in. Harry dares to glance into it and sees Louis in there, looking terrifically attractive with aviators and a cool expression on.

Harry has to turn his face away. He stares down at the weeds in his hands, gathering himself. He can’t freak out right now if he’s going to do this.

The car door thuds closed. Harry turns back around and sees Louis walking his way, beaming, carrying a few cloth bags filled with food.

“Hi! Not running today, I take it.”

“In a few minutes...” Harry says it at a lower volume than he usually speaks. The nerves are getting to him, but it’s okay – Louis nods and goes up the stairs. He twists the doorknob and –

“Harry! Why’d you lock the door?” Louis says.

Harry tries to come up with something, and all that he comes out with is a dumb “uh...”

Louis doesn’t find the locked door that strange though. Without any other remarks, he puts one of his bags down and fishes his house keys from his pocket. Harry takes the bag for him.

They step into the house. Harry stares at Louis’ figure from behind and he’s overwhelmed simply by his movements – there’s _life_ in Louis. His heels make padding noises on the floor. The tendons of hands protude as his fingers curl over the handle of the grocery bag. He leaves a smell of cologne behind him. He hums – the melody that comes out of him slips through the hall.

Louis tosses the bag onto the kitchen counter.

“What did you say you put out this morning? The pork?” Louis says.

Before Harry has to give him another stupid “uh” he answers the question himself.

“Oh, right, the chicken you said.”

Louis walks past him, back into the hall and up the staircase that’s there. While he does, he takes off his shirt and from where Harry is, down below, he can make out how unmarked Louis’ skin is. There’s no “It is what it is” tattoo or any of those other ones on his chest and none on his arms either.

It helps Harry distance himself from the situation. It’s a different Louis. So he can do this, stay sane. He won’t do anything reckless here.

A couple minutes pass, and Louis goes into the kitchen where Harry’s putting the food away. He’s changed into a light blue t-shirt.

“Can we roast the chicken? We haven’t had that in a while,” Louis says.

“Sure,” Harry says.

Louis flicks his head to get his fringe out of his eyes. This Louis’ hair is longer. The tips reach his jowls.

“You look beautiful,” Harry says.

Louis smirks at him, but it’s not the snarky smirk. It’s soft and appreciative. “No, I don’t,” he says and that’s exactly how Harry’s own Louis would’ve reacted.

The uncooked package of chicken is at the end of the counter. Louis drags it to the cutting board beside the stove. “Bawk bawk be-gawk!” he says.

Harry laughs.

The kitchen opens right up to a living area. Harry takes a seat on a couch and watches Louis as he bounds between the counters, getting out vegetables.

“Are you really going to just sit there?” Louis says in mock indignation. “I’m not hosting a cooking show, Harry!”

“You’d be good at narrating what you’re doing though. Much better than me.”

“Oh, I agree with that wholeheartedly,” Louis chuckles. “God knows what you’d sound like. You’d do it so slow like, ‘So... wait... until... the mushrooms... brown... and... while... you... oh, look – the mushrooms are done before I got to finish my sentence!”

“Shut up,” Harry says and walks back into the kitchen.

He preheats the oven for Louis and they quietly dice things, and it’s really just like being at home. Louis is there, a physical presence at Harry’s side, brushing elbows occasionally, and they live their day together like this, and it’s perfect in its tranquility. Here’s how it once was for Harry and he gets a tiny bit of that again.

The peace doesn’t last for long. Louis tries to stick the end of a carrot in Harry’s ear.

“You’re an eight-year-old!” Harry says.

Harry takes Louis’ arms, pulls him toward himself as he walks to the living room. He sits on the couch’s armrest, gets Louis right up against his body.

Harry places his hands on each side of Louis’ head and pulls him in for a kiss. He does it soft and thorough, breathes Louis in...

For just a few seconds, he pretends these are the lips of his Louis, every part that’s touching him is Louis – the hand that palms his hips and the knees that knock against his.

Harry’s propelled out of the moment when Louis pushes him down, has him slide backward off the armrest and drop onto the cushions. Louis breaks the kiss, but he lowers himself onto Harry. He rests his head on his collarbone, and his hair tickles Harry’s chin.

With his thick arms, Harry cocoons this not-quite Louis. He locks his legs with his. He does it too tight – Louis wiggles a bit to hint at it, so Harry loosens a little. Holding him like this, Harry’s reminded that Louis is a contradiction in size. He’s a compact body engulfed by Harry, but his presence is enormous.

Harry puts his nose in Louis’ hair and whispers, “Always be grateful for what we have. Always always always.”

“I will,” Louis says brightly. Eyes closed, he slides his fingers underneath Harry’s shirt and kisses his neck, but then says, “It’s getting hot and steamy in here... and it’s because the oven’s done preheating!”

Louis tumbles off Harry and returns to the kitchen. He starts readying the chicken and the vegetables going in there with it.

Harry senses this is the time to go. He goes to the doorway of the kitchen and stands there observing Louis, taking in his details for the last time.

Louis hums again, and it’s different from what he hummed before. It’s really familiar actually, and... It’s what Louis played on the piano, back in Harry’s reality. Harry listens to it with fierce concentration. He was going to remember it and he’d get it onto an album.

Louis catches him standing there, doing seemingly nothing. He stops humming. He grins at him and crosses his eyes. Harry twists his features too by sticking out his tongue and cocking an eyebrow.

Harry could’ve stood there for a little longer to watch Louis contently putter around the kitchen. He thinks the final sight of Louis’ goofy face can’t be topped though, so he leaves as planned.

Somehow, he manages to get through that front door and meet Ruth. Ruth hugs him, and while they do, the house with Louis in it disappears.

He doesn’t feel too bad because he’s realized that Louis, the one he loves, never went away. He didn’t actually go anywhere on the day of his death, just physically he did. It goes back to that feeling of immensity he gave off – Louis enveloped everyone he met, especially Harry. There was lots of him, mostly made of loudness and laughter, so he seeped into nooks and crannies and he left traces that couldn’t be scrubbed off. Over the years, he shaped Harry, gave him part of himself to carry like his humour or just little mundane things like his way of folding towels. Or that melody he hummed.

Whatever those things were, it made Louis permanent, and if he was permanent, then from now on, no matter where Harry goes, Louis will be with him. Any time he feels the need to go with Ruth and find Louis again, Harry will remind himself of this. He hopes he’ll never go back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! A few notes:
> 
> 1) I wrote a [self-indulgent one-shot](http://archiveofourown.org/works/926064) that shows how Louis and Harry from Reality 6 met at the Script concert.  
> 2) Here's an [inspiration board](http://onedireckoner.tumblr.com/image/59034584818) I ended up making, if you're curious.  
> 2) Here's a [mix I listened to](http://www.sendspace.com/file/nuvglg) that helped me imagine a lot of these scenes, if you're into music.


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